The distant hills which seem to be always
calling the imaginative boy away from the familiar fields and hearth
do not conspire against his peace, however much they may conspire
against his comfort; they help him to the fulfilment of his destiny by
suggesting to his imagination the deeper experience, the richer
growth, the higher tasks which await him in the world beyond the
horizon. Man is a wanderer by the law of his life; and if he never
leaves his home in which he is born, he never builds a home of his
own.
It is the law of life that a child should leave his father and
separate himself from his inherited surroundings, in order that by
self-unfolding and self-realisation he may substitute a conscious for
an unconscious, a moral for an instinctive relation. The instinct of
the myth-makers was sound when it led them to attach such importance
to the wandering and the return; the separation effected in order that
individuality and character might be realised through isolation and
experience, the return voluntarily made through clear recognition of
the soundness of the primitive relations, the beauty of the service of
the older and wiser to the younger and the more ignorant.
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